Gaiety Pastel Cookies

Lynn Belluscio, curator at the Jell-O Gallery in Le Roy, sent us this recipe. You will need a cookie press for this recipe. If you don’t have one, roll the dough into logs about 1 inch in diameter. Wrap in plastic and chill for an hour, then cut into ¼-inch slices.

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl beat butter or margarine with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in sugar and 1 package of the gelatin. Mix in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour and baking powder until well-blended.

Force dough through cookie press onto a greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, keeping at least 1 inch of space between cookies. Cookies should be about an inch in diameter. Sprinkle with additional gelatin. Decorate with additional decorating sprinkles, if desired.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cookies just turn golden brown around the edges. Remove and cool on rack. Store loosely in covered container.

Makes about 10 dozen 1-inch cookies.

There’s room for Jell-O in your holiday cookie routine

As the 1960s jingle goes, there’s always room for Jell-O.

And as the product’s long and storied history shows, there’s always room for another Jell-O recipe.

From Victorian aspics and the Jell-O salads of the June Cleaver era to hedonistic Jell-O shots and global gourmet Jell-O sushi, the jiggling, jewel-colored dessert product thrives on culinary adaptation and innovation.

“Jell-O says to me ‘Experiment with me, what can you do with Jell-O? It brings out the creative nature,’”says Lynn Belluscio, curator of the Jell-O Gallery in Le Roy, the product’s birthplace.

In the early 1900s, shortly after Jell-O inventor Pearl Wait sold the recipe to marketing wizard Orator Frank Woodward, who set the product on an advertising trajectory of amazing proportion, the company was constantly seeking out ways to incorporate Jell-O brand gelatin into classic, traditional recipes. The early results brought upper-class foods to the masses.

Take plum pudding, a dessert that called for suet and took hours to make. It was usually reserved for households that could afford to hire a cook until Jell-O allowed families of lesser means to make a more convenient form of the dessert, says Belluscio.

Jell-O was similarly adapted to make meringues, whipped toppings and aspics easier, she adds.

Over the years, Jell-O’s test kitchens also followed another strategy: What are totally new ways to use the product? It’s easy to assume that Jell-O shots are a relatively recent adaption that allowed grown-ups to embrace Jell-O as much as kids, but in fact a sophisticated Jell-O recipe from the early 1900s used wine instead of water, notes Belluscio.

Jell-O has also been adapted to uses that go beyond food. As Carolyn Wyman’s 2001 book, Jell-O: A Biography, testifies, the gelatin can be used as a dye for hair or wool, as a finger paint and as a way to rid your dishwasher or shower of soap scum. Jell-O has even had supporting roles in the movies. In The Ten Commandments, Jell-O was part of the illusion of the parted Red Sea, and in The Wizard of Oz, the horse that changed color was actually a make-up job based on Jell-O.

As for Jell-O and cookies, Belluscio says it’s important to consider the definition of cookie. If jigglers count, then Jell-O and Kraft Brands, Jell-O’s parent company, offers a Christmas tree jiggler recipe on its website.

Belluscio does not know the exact time when the recipe we found for Gaiety Pastel Cookies first originated, but she estimates the 1950s, ’60s or ’70s, “the same time you see the pressed cookie, the rolled cookie and the sugar drop cookie. “They also used (Jell-O) for decoration on the top of a cookie. Your chances of having powdered gelatin are greater than having the colored sugar in your cupboard,” she says.